1. Field of the Disclosed Embodiments
The disclosure relates to air traffic dynamic trajectory synchronization, and in particular the synchronization of air traffic trajectory to correct for disturbances that cause a trajectory change.
2. Introduction
This application claims priority to U.S. Provisional Application No. 61/542,071 entitled “METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR DYNAMIC AIR TRAFFIC TRAJECTORY SYNCHRONIZATION,” filed on Sep. 30, 2011, the entire disclosure of which is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety.
This application is related to the following co-pending application, which is hereby incorporated by reference in its entirety: “METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR AIR TRAFFIC TRAJECTORY SYNCHRONIZATION”, filed Nov. 9, 2011, U.S. application Ser. No. 13/292,685 to Sergio Torres et al., now U.S. Pat. No. 8,560,148 B2 issued on Oct. 15, 2013.
This application is related to the following co-pending application, which is hereby incorporated by reference in its entirety: “METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR AIR TRAFFIC TRAJECTORY SYNCHRONIZATION”, filed Nov. 9, 2011, U.S. application Ser. No. 13/292,685 to Sergio Torres et al.
This application is related to the following application, which is hereby incorporated by reference in its entirety: “METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR AIR TRAFFIC TRAJECTORY SYNCHRONIZATION”, filed Nov. 9, 2010, U.S. Provisional Application No. 61/411,628 to Sergio Torres et al.
In trajectory based operations (TBO), air-ground and ground-ground interoperability and trajectory synchronization among the various systems is required since each of these systems rely on an accurate prediction of the flight path in four dimensions (4D trajectory). Without proper synchronization, the ATC/ATM management of the airspace is forced to add significant uncertainty into its prediction of the aircraft trajectory, thus decreasing the potential capacity of the available airspace and the efficiency of operations. The uncertainty that results from air-ground and ground-ground trajectory discrepancies also leads to non-optimal tactical intervention. The goal of air-ground (or ground-ground) trajectory synchronization is to produce trajectories in disparate systems whose discrepancies are operationally insignificant, increasing the likelihood of flying the planned conflict-free and business-preferred trajectories. In addition, if conditions change in the ground requiring alternative trajectories (i.e., projecting for conflict resolution or schedule management, for instance), then the ATC/ATM systems have to be able to independently build new trajectories that satisfy the requirements and preferences of the FMS-generated trajectories.
During periods of relative changes of the different platform the initial synchronized trajectories could lose synchronization and need to be updated. The disclosed method and apparatus solves the problem of maintaining trajectories synchronized from independent systems such as from FMS and ground ATC during the entire history of the flight. Since a number of trajectory discrepancy factors will intervene during the lifetime of a flight, such as a change in flight intent, controller intervention, external forces, or large deviations of the actual flight from the predicted trajectory due to prediction errors, there is need to dynamically monitor these deviations and control a dynamic synchronization cycle.